Tornadoes and Wind Storms

The tornado that has come to define the Plainfield area hit on August 28, 1990 -- nearly 25 years ago -- yet its fallout continues to this day. Now, the community is invited to attend a special event on Friday, August 28, 2015 to mark the occasion and reflect on how the storm impacted the town, its people, the media, even the weather business itself, and ultimately helped forge a new identity for the community. The Plainfield Historical Society, Village Trustees, Public Library District, St. Mary Immaculate Church and School District 202 are working together to present the special program. A commemoration ceremony will start at 3 p.m. at the tornado memorial on Ft. Beggs Street...

Venture far enough south in Kansas, as native son Thomas Fox Averill says, and town names tend to illustrate hope or contrast more than they reflect reality. Garden City appears parched, and Liberal leans conservative, the Topeka author observes.
An...

Coal City officials said Tuesday morning that they believe a tornado tore through the town overnight, hitting the high school as it came from the west, tearing up dozens of homes and then heavily damaging a fire station as it left.
Several people were...

Hail as big as golf balls slammed into him as drenching rain fell, but none of that mattered. Weather photographer Kelly DeLay sensed this was his moment to capture the kind of rare natural phenomenon that fuels the adrenaline of a storm chaser.
And at...

Hail as big as golf balls slammed into him as drenching rain fell, but none of that mattered. Weather photographer Kelly DeLay sensed this was his moment to capture the kind of rare natural phenomenon that fuels the adrenaline of a storm chaser.
And at...

Joe Garguilo emerged sleepy-eyed from his house Saturday after enduring another night of pounding rain and wind, coming on the heels of a tornado that had ripped through his property a few days earlier.
“See that horse trough by the van?” he asked,...

Stella Wu arrived in this sleepy agricultural town on the north bank of the Yangtze River on Friday in hopes of retrieving her 51-year-old mother’s corpse from the capsized Eastern Star cruise ship.
For days, she had sought help and answers about the...

Violent storms across Colorado have swirled into tornadoes that destroyed homes, popped open a sinkhole that swallowed a police cruiser and dropped so much hail on a Denver neighborhood that residents had to dig out of waist-deep ice with shovels.
...

Floodwaters deepened across much of Texas on Tuesday as storms dumped almost a foot more of rain on the Houston area, stranding hundreds of motorists and inundating the famously congested highways that serve the nation's fourth-largest city.Meanwhile, the...

A tornado raged through a city on the U.S.-Mexico border Monday, destroying homes, flinging cars like matchsticks and ripping an infant away from its mother. At least 13 people were killed, authorities said.
In Texas, 12 people were reported missing...

Tornadoes roared across North Texas, creating widespread damage but leaving no immediate reports of injuries.
What storm spotters reported as at least one tornado inflicted heavy damage late Tuesday night to houses and apartment buildings in the...

Melissa and Michael Mooneyhan met as high school students and quickly fell in love. The two were married in 2004, even before they graduated.
More than a decade later, the pair died shielding their young daughter from a tornado as the twister chewed up...

Emergency responders searched through splintered wreckage Monday after a line of tornadoes battered several small communities in Texas and Arkansas, killing at least five people, including a young couple who died trying to shield their daughter from the...

South Dakota was the center of weather extremes Sunday, with a tornado hitting a small town on the eastern side of the state and more than a foot of snow blanketing the Black Hills to the west.
It was among several Great Plains and Midwest states in...

Authorities are investigating the damage left behind by spring storms carrying more than a dozen suspected tornadoes that swept across the southern Plains, bringing floods, forcing the evacuation of an international airport and destroying homes near...

The day after tornadoes scoured parts of seven counties in north central Illinois, killing two women in a small town that was destroyed, National Weather Service meteorologists sought to explain exactly what happened.
What they found underscored the...

Nathan Henson was getting ready to go to sleep Thursday evening at his home just outside the small Illinois community of Fairdale when the house began to shake.
Henson, 23, and his father stepped out onto a small balcony and watched as a...

Power companies managed to restore electricity to thousands of people in Mississippi on Wednesday, a day after a powerful storm swept through the southeastern U.S. and killed four people.
About 6,000 people were without power after the storm Tuesday...

A Pacific storm pounded Southern California with heavy rain and high winds on Friday, triggering a small tornado, flash floods and mudslides that prompted the evacuation of hundreds of homes, damaged dozens of others and disrupted passenger rail...